Oct 12, 2008

Moong Dal Kichidi

A delicious, healthy and filling rice dish

Kichidi (or Pongali as we call in Telugu) is a staple food in many Indian households. This is usually served as breakfast during weddings too. In our case, we mostly eat this during dinner time. And we like our kichidi to be little spongy and soft, so I add an additional cup of water than the regular 2 cups water for 1 cup of rice. My version is little different than the authentic version.
Let's see the recipe:

Ingredients:

1½ cups Rice

1 cup Split Moong Daal (Pesara Pappu, Yellow Lentils)

1 small Tomato

1 tsp Black Pepper Powder

A small piece of Ginger

1 tsp Ghee

A handful of Cilantro

3 or 4 small green Chilies

6 cups Water

Salt as required

For Seasoning:

½ tsp Mustard Seeds

¼ tsp Cumin Seeds

½ tsp Black Gram (Senaga Pappu, Chana Dal)

½ tsp Bengal Gram (Minappappu, Urad Dal)

Some Curry Leaves

1 tsp Cashews

1 tsp Oil

Preparation:

Chop tomato, green chilies and ginger into tiny pieces. Keep aside.

Combine
rice and moong dal and wash well. To this add the chopped veggies along
with black pepper powder + cilantro and add the required water (6 cups)
and salt.

Pressure-cook this until 3 whistles. When all the pressure is gone, add seasoning + ghee and mix well.

For
seasoning, heat oil in a pan, and add the mustard seeds. When these
pop, add the cumin, Bengal, black gram dals along with the curry leaves
and cashews and stir until the cashews and dal turn into golden brown in
color. Add this seasoning to the cooked kichidi.

Finally add ghee to the kichidi to make it more aromatic and mix well.

39
comments:

I love pongal, and yours looks so homely and traditional. With warm cashews on top, you sure do know how to tempt us, don't you?Thanks so much for the award Uma, and for thinking about me.I appreciate it :)

Pongal is my fav break, But never added tomat, it gives a nice color and different taste too, yummy looking, Thanks Dear to pass the Butterfly award, at least these time I tried to acknole! Congrats u deserved it!

We had Pongal continuosly for lunch the past 2 days. I had never made the authentic way before, so this we fell in love with it and made it over again, ofcourse, with ur cucumber pickle on the side :D..